The technology of the present disclosure relates to a fixing method of a collimator lens used in an optical scanning device to a housing, an optical scanning device, and an image forming apparatus.
In general, an optical scanning device is mounted in an electrophotographic image forming apparatus such as a laser printer. The optical scanning device, for example, allows light emitted from a light source such as a semiconductor laser to be incident into a rotating polygon mirror, allows an image of the light deflected by the rotating polygon mirror to be formed on a peripheral surface of a photosensitive drum by an image forming lens (fθlens), and allows the light to be scanned. Between the light source and the rotating polygon mirror, a collimator lens that collimates the light emitted from the light source is arranged.
As a fixing method of the aforementioned collimator lens to a housing, a method using an adhesive is proposed. In this method, the adhesive is coated on a lens fixing surface of the housing, the collimator lens is held by a robot hand to be placed on the lens fixing surface and a position thereof is adjusted, and then the coated adhesive is hardened, so that the collimator lens is fixed to the housing.
When the position of the collimator lens is adjusted, a light diameter detection sensor for detecting a diameter of light beam is firstly arranged at a position corresponding to a surface on which an image is formed. Furthermore, the position of the collimator lens is adjusted by the robot hand such that the diameter of the light beam detected by the light diameter detection sensor reaches a predetermined value.